Title of sound recording: Oral History Interview with Herman Talmadge,
November 8, 1990. Interview A-0347. Southern Oral History Program
Collection (#4007)

Title of series: Series A. Southern Politics. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (A-0347)

Author: John Egerton

Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Herman Talmadge,
November 8, 1990. Interview A-0347. Southern Oral History Program
Collection (#4007)

Title of series: Series A. Southern Politics. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (A-0347)

Author: Herman Talmadge

Description: 92.1 Mb

Description: 29 p.

Note:
Interview conducted on November 8, 1990, by John
Egerton; recorded in Hampton, Georgia.

Note:
Transcribed by Jovita Flynn.

Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series A. Southern Politics, Manuscripts Department, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.

Editorial practicesAn audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines.Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references.All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "All em dashes are encoded as —

[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

Page 1

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JOHN EGERTON:

[I'm talking with former Governor and Senator Herman E. Talmadge]. . .
Democrat of Georgia, now retired, living near Jonesboro, Georgia.
Interviewed of Friday, November 8, 1990. I just thought maybe we could
talk about a few things. You're a survivor, you know. A sort of a
revolution has gone on in the South since 1945 or so.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I survived until '80, and then I got beat [Laughter].

JOHN EGERTON:

Yeah, but you're still hale and hearty, and you're enjoying your life.
You've got some good bird dogs out there, I see.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I think I got my mother's genes. She lived to be a 101.

JOHN EGERTON:

Your mother did? Is that right? That's amazing. I wonder, when you think
back on all that's happened in the South since the end of the war
really. I mean that's when the huge change. . . .

[Interruption]

So much has happened. You go back and you start reading newspapers and
magazines, and you just think, gosh, either I didn't know all this
happened or I'd forgotten it. It was just so much.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Passes gradually and you don't notice it like you would if it just
suddenly jumped out of it. . . .from being blindfolded. It's been
phenomenal really.

Page 2

JOHN EGERTON:

Let me ask you a little bit about earlier on. You came out of the
service, didn't you, in about '45?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes.

JOHN EGERTON:

Could you give me just a little bit of the background, your military
background?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Sure. I was commissioned in naval intelligence as an ensign in April,
1941. I was called to active duty in the intelligence office in Atlanta
in September, 1941. I'd been trained for cable sensor work in New York,
and shortly after the Japs hit Pearl Harbor on December 7, I was
transferred to my mobilization assignment, which was 67 Broad Street,
New York, which was central intelligence and cable [inaudible].

JOHN EGERTON:

How old were you at that time?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I was born in '13, so I was 27 years old.

JOHN EGERTON:

Twenty-seven years old. Out of college a few years? Out of law
school?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

That's right. Had been practicing law, just started practicing law in
Atlanta. Then I got fed up with cable sensor work in New York, and I
requested combat duty. They sent me to the first midshipman's school at
Northwestern University about the middle of '42. In that same class was
Robert Taft, Jr. After I finished midshipman's school, they tried to
teach us the fundamentals that you learn in the Naval Academy in four
years in sixty or ninety days, I've forgotten. Then they assigned me to
a ship that was under construction in California, the USS Tryon. It was
a disguised hospital ship. The Japanese paid no attention to the Geneva
Convention, so while it was a hospital ship, we

Page 3

were
heavily armed for an auxiliary and could fight, or pretended to, and
auxiliaries did. They really weren't equipped for much battle, but they
did have guns and things of that nature. I served as a division officer
on her, and then was transferred from that to New Zealand, where I
became aide to Commodore Jolly, Flag Secretary down there, afterwards
Transportation Officer in New Zealand. After I had been in the South
Pacific for twenty-two and a half months, they sent me home for twenty
days leave, as I recall, in a precommissioning detail at Rhode Island,
New York. Afterwards, I was made Prospective Executive Officer on an
attack transport, APA 97. When the ship [Interruption.] was commissioned, we acted as auxiliary training ship afloat for
the Atlantic Fleet at Newport, Rhode Island, for about sixty days. We'd
take details out for a week and run them through the routine that
similar auxiliaries and attack transports experienced, and let them
stand watches along side our men. I went to the South Pacific then and
was engaged in the campaign for the Philippines, and I participated in
landing the first cavalry division in Tokyo Bay, while McArthur was
dictating the surrender ceremonies. Then after the war was over, I had
far more points than I needed to be demobilized, so I came back and was
placed on inactive duty about November, '45. I served a total of 52
months. Went in as an ensign and came out as a lieutenant commander.

JOHN EGERTON:

So you were back in Georgia then at the beginning of '46, and back in law
practice and interested in politics?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

That's right. I had come back just shortly before my father engaged in
his last campaign for governor in '46.

Page 4

JOHN EGERTON:

And do I have it right that up until about 1940, governors served two
year terms and could succeed themselves, and that got changed. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Ellis Arnall was the first four year governor.

JOHN EGERTON:

First four-year governor and he could not succeed himself.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

That's correct.

JOHN EGERTON:

Then the '46 campaign which turned into that kind of musical chairs. . .
.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

For governor, right.

JOHN EGERTON:

The two governor thing.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

My father died, and the legislature elected me and I went through the
courts. I won two out of three court decisions from the lower courts,
and lost the state Supreme Court decision five to two. Then I vacated
the office, and then I announced I'd carry it to the people and won the
unexpired term of my Daddy in 1948.

JOHN EGERTON:

Which means a two-year term, again, was in effect. That election was for
two years.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Right. The unexpired term of Eugene Talmadge, that's what I served.

JOHN EGERTON:

Right. And that did not disqualify you to run for a four-year term.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

For reelection, right.

JOHN EGERTON:

So in 1950 you ran for. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I was elected for a full four-year term.

JOHN EGERTON:

Then were you elected to the Senate in '54?

Page 5

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Had a two year hiatus. I was elected to the Senate in '56.

JOHN EGERTON:

In the '50 campaign, when you won the full term, as well as '48, some of
the reading that I've done indicates to me that Governor Arnall might
well have challenged you. Could he have legally challenged you in '48
for that, or would he have been ineligible to run?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He would have been ineligible in '48. He would have been eligible in
'50.

JOHN EGERTON:

But he didn't make any go for it, did he?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

No, he did not. We had the acting governor, or rather M.E. Thompson was
sitting as acting governor, and the Arnall group and the Rivers group
supported Thompson.

JOHN EGERTON:

Did it surprise you some that Arnall never really made a serious run
again for governor?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

No, it would have been impossible for Arnall to challenge Thompson
because he was acting as governor and he was a member of the Arnall
faction. So it would have divided their forces irrevocably. Now, if
Thompson had stood aside and let Arnall on, it would have been
different.

JOHN EGERTON:

Knowing what you know now about all that has happened since 1954 Brown decision and all the civil rights stuff and
everything, do you think, if you had it to do over, you'd do anything
any different than you did while you were governor? Particularly about
your governor's time, I'm not thinking about the senator.

Page 6

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I'm sure there would have been some particular things I would have done
different. What are you referring to?

JOHN EGERTON:

Well, I'm thinking, for example, about the white primary?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

No, I wouldn't have been elected if I'd done different.

JOHN EGERTON:

You wouldn't have had a chance?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

JOHN EGERTON:

Some people would have said the same thing about Arnall with respect to
the poll tax, but he went ahead and took it on.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

No, that was not the issue of the white primary at all.

JOHN EGERTON:

Didn't have the emotional impact?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

In fact, my father supported repealing the poll tax.

JOHN EGERTON:

Did he?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the people were probably in
favor of repealing the poll tax, but at that time probably 10-15% of the
white people were in favor of repealing the Democrat white primary.

JOHN EGERTON:

So you had a solid 85% white mandate?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Not that many votes because people don't vote directly on issues, but the
sentiment of the people was about 85%.

JOHN EGERTON:

That's pretty hard for a politician to ignore, isn't it, if he wants to
stay in business?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, if you want to challenge it, just don't run for public office.
Resort to the courts.

JOHN EGERTON:

During that time, a great many whites, and you yourself, used to say,
"The problems that we have in this region, we can work out. And if the
federal government will not

Page 7

interfere in this, we
will work them out." How long do you think it might have taken for us to
have come to grips with this?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Actually by the time we passed the civil rights bill [1964 and 1965], any
black that wanted to vote in Georgia was registered and did vote. As a
matter of fact, during my father's race in 1946 probably 130,000 blacks
voted in that primary. By the time I ran in '48, probably 200,000 blacks
voted. We didn't pass the Civil Rights Act until the '60s. By that time,
virtually any black that wanted to vote in Georgia was voting. Now,
breaking down segregation would have taken a little longer. They were
beginning to make some inroads in the cities, but not in the rural
areas. It probably would have taken another 25 years on segregation.

JOHN EGERTON:

Yeah. Would it have been a good route to go, do you think? I mean, you
felt it pretty strongly then.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, it would have prevented lots of turmoil and everything else that we
did have. 'Course, the route that we should have gone, when they passed
the Fourteenth Amendment, that really was the basis of all these
so-called rights and still is. At that time, we ought not to have ever
had segregated schools, segregation in the South. Once you adopt a
pattern and a mold of conduct with all of the laws involved, including
your Constitution, and it's been in being for over a 100 years, people
don't change their habits.

JOHN EGERTON:

They really don't. I've done some reading, too, back in that period of
time, and the laws really came into place between about 1877 and the
turn of the century.

Page 8

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Right. As a matter of fact, we didn't have the white primary law in
Georgia, I don't think, until about 1917.

JOHN EGERTON:

Yeah, it was after the turn of the century.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Called Neil's Primary Act. They had done it, though, by resolution in the
Democrat Party prior to that. But blacks voted in elections up until, I
guess, the early 20th century.

JOHN EGERTON:

Then you had 30 or 40 years where it was just. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

That's right. What made the people so mad and disgusted them so, see, the
blacks had, unfortunately, a lower level of education than whites, and
they would vote, say, 10,000 votes in Augusta, Georgia, and the results
would be 9,995. Just like voting cattle or pine trees, and that's the
reason they disfranchised the blacks. [Richard] Daley [of Chicago] in
his heyday couldn't muster the votes that they did in those days, black
vote. Manipulated, bought and sold, just like cattle. That probably had
more to do with disfranchising them than their color, really.

JOHN EGERTON:

Prior to the Brown decision, that was in '54, those
cases were in the lower courts for about three years. And even before
that, there were some higher education rulings. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

A ruling in Texas on the university system that antedated the voting
issue.

JOHN EGERTON:

And some of those went back quite some time. Looking back on that now, it
seems to me that people surely must have seen this coming. And yet when
I talk to people, regardless of their point of view on whether they
think Brown was good or bad, they still say they were
shocked when Brown came down.

Page 9

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I tried to anticipate it to some degree with my [inaudible]
and my building authority. When I took the governor's office in '48,
there was inequality in teachers' salaries between whites and blacks. I
equalized that. There was woeful inequality in the schools between
whites and blacks.

JOHN EGERTON:

Yeah, the buildings and all of that.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I had a mammoth school building authority. We built more schools in
Georgia than any state in the union except New York and California. Each
one of those states had about three times our population and much higher
per capita income. I did that to try to equalize the opportunity for
blacks and whites. When I took office, the white children were riding
school buses to school, and the black children were walking. I changed
all that. I equalized the salaries, I put them in school buses, and I
put them in good buildings. Frankly, part of that was to try to stave
off the threat of integrated schools. It didn't work.

JOHN EGERTON:

Could it have worked?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Looking back on it in hindsight, it could not have worked, probably with
the lawsuits. Looking back on it in hindsight, it was the proper thing
to do regardless of motive. When they passed the Fourteenth Amendment,
following the War Between the States, they ought to have broken down the
barrier of segregation at that time.

JOHN EGERTON:

Right then, yeah.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Then we'd have never had the problem that we had in the courts, and the
local level, and everything else.

Page 10

JOHN EGERTON:

It was your responsibility, and it fell on you to deal with the whole
notion of the law said separate but equal, the courts were about. . .
.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

And the people said that, too.

JOHN EGERTON:

And the people said that, and the courts were about to say something
else.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I was between the people and the courts, really.

JOHN EGERTON:

From an economic standpoint, leaving aside the politics and all that, do
you think Georgia could have supported two separate school systems that
would have ever been adequate in the larger scheme of things?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, we did in those days. Strangely enough, more money we spend on
education, the worst the SAT scores get. So there's a hell of lot more
to schools than just money. I found that out when I was governor. It
takes an apt teacher and an apt pupil to have a good school. You can do
it under the shade of a pine tree, if you've got that. But the main
problem with education today is the fact that we've had a complete
breakdown in discipline in this country. It's true in the homes. It's
true in the schools. We don't use the rod any more. They used that
freely when I was a student, and I needed every whipping I ever got,
too, and they all helped me. We've had a complete breakdown of
discipline in the homes and the schools and the workplace and even in
the military. That's the problem with education today.

Page 11

JOHN EGERTON:

Well, there's no doubt that a whole lot has changed in this society, and
right now, I think everybody's got an uneasy feeling that nobody knows
quite how to get it back on track.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

We've got to restore discipline, and I don't know quite how to do it.

JOHN EGERTON:

But prior to Brown, were you shocked by that ruling?
Did you go along thinking that it would never happen?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, I knew what the decisions of the court had ruled. The latest one
that I recall, I believe was 1896, and I think it was full-bench
[unanimous] decision. I knew that it was not unheard of to reverse
decisions, but I thought in a matter that fundamental that the courts
would be pretty slow about it. And the real shock that I got was [Chief
Justice Earl] Warren got a unanimous decision.

JOHN EGERTON:

Nine to nothing. And Plessy, the 1896. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Plessy v. Ferguson was 1896.

JOHN EGERTON:

It was seven to one. Charles Evans Hughes, I think, was the only
dissenter. So that was virtually unanimous. This was a complete
turnaround.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

It was a judicial revolution and a political revolution really.

JOHN EGERTON:

And yet by the time Roosevelt had put. . . .

[Interruption]

We were talking about that period of time right in the early '50s when
the cases were in court and whatnot, and Brown was
unanimous. That was really the shock for a lot of people, I think.

Page 12

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I wouldn't have been so surprised if it had been 5 to 4 decision, but
unanimous was. . . .

JOHN EGERTON:

Let me ask you about Ralph McGill. He opposed you pretty much through the
time you were governor.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He opposed some of my philosophy. I'm not sure that Ralph McGill didn't
vote for me. Our personal relationship was good, and he had many kind
things to say about me personally in his editorials. We violently
disagreed on the segregation issue.

JOHN EGERTON:

Yeah, but up until Brown. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He was a strong segregationist.

JOHN EGERTON:

Yes, he was.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Fact, everybody was but about 10%, as I told you. Ralph was the
personification of liberalism in Georgia, and he was a segregationist
also. Old Tennessee hillbilly which makes it natural.

JOHN EGERTON:

That's right. And when he changed his mind on that is when Brown came down. His view, which I think historically, you'd
have to say, was the correct view, was I don't care whether I like this
or not, this is now what our constituted system says.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He was just way ahead of public opinion on that issue.

JOHN EGERTON:

And from that time on, he caught a lot of flak.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He did.

JOHN EGERTON:

Because he stuck to. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

In fact, he was hated for two or three years by most white people.

JOHN EGERTON:

What was your view of him in that crucial time right after '54?

Page 13

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Oh, our personal relationship was cordial. My first campaign against M.
E. Thompson, we had a debate. We didn't have television at that time,
and he [McGill] was the moderator. He handled it extremely well, fair to
all sides. He said many very kind things about me in his editorial
columns. The only thing we basically differed on, as I recall, was the
white primary and segregation.

JOHN EGERTON:

As you look back on it now, would you concede that he was historically
right?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

With perspective hindsight, yeah. He antedated public opinion about eight
or ten years.

JOHN EGERTON:

Do you have admiration for him for taking that position?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Oh sure. I attended his funeral.

JOHN EGERTON:

Pretty lonely position there for a while, wasn't it?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yeah.

JOHN EGERTON:

Because, as you say, he was bucking 80% or more of the white opinion.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Oh, the tide of public opinion. He was a very courageous man, and a very
fine writer. Strangely enough, now, my father's relationships with Ralph
McGill was very cordial. They got along fine.

JOHN EGERTON:

What about Ellis Arnall? Did you have a good personal relationship with
him?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

After I got in the Senate, Ellis and I developed into a good, close
friendship. When I ran for reelection to the Senate

Page 14

in 1962, the first contribution I got, $500.00, was from Ellis
Arnall.

JOHN EGERTON:

Is that right? He was identified as a liberal in the '40s.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He was ahead of his time.

JOHN EGERTON:

Was he a segregationist liberal, the same way as Ralph McGill was?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, I'll tell you what he said [Laughter] in his opening campaign speech against my Daddy in 1942. The
race issue was involved there. He was opening his campaign down in
Newnan. He said the white people in Coweta County know what to do if a
black tries to go to school in [inaudible] County. So he
was threatening them with lynching [Laughter]. That was his view in '42. Then when he got to be governor, and
I think got political ambitions nationally—Roosevelt, you know, had a
way of picking out some eight or ten governors, leading them to believe
they were going to be on the ticket for vice president, and I think
Ellis got the political bug at that time. Got more in tune with the
national agenda than with public opinion in the state.

JOHN EGERTON:

But you don't interpret that as being reflective of his personal
views?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't want to say exactly what his personal views
were, but as long as he was in Georgia politics, I know what his
personal views were.

JOHN EGERTON:

They were essentially segregationist?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yeah, when he got in national politics, maybe he had a change of
heart.

Page 15

JOHN EGERTON:

Here's a question I've wondered about a lot. When '48 came, you were
running for governor. Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright bolted the
Democratic Party, went off on their own, and you never blinked an eye. I
never saw anything in the record to indicate that you even thought about
going with them. Why not?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I knew it was a futile effort. Third parties had no chance, and I had
already been nominated for governor on the Democratic ticket. I knew I
had four years ahead of me to govern this state, and I didn't want to
make a blind end run for something like that. So I stayed away from it.
Strom Thurmond was a cousin of mine. My mother was. . . .

JOHN EGERTON:

Is that right? Did you lend any visible or even token support to Franklin
Roosevelt in that election, I'm sorry, Harry Truman in that
election?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Stayed out it completely. Georgia went overwhelmingly for the Democratic
ticket. Had I gotten involved, possibly I could have carried the state
for Strom Thurmond, but I didn't attempt to do so.

JOHN EGERTON:

Over next door in Alabama. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

It went for Thurmond. South Carolina went for Thurmond, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Arkansas.

JOHN EGERTON:

In Alabama, even though Jim Folsom was the governor, and was, you know,
pretty far more toward the left than. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He was a real liberal, yes.

JOHN EGERTON:

And yet they couldn't even get the Democratic Party on the ballot in
Alabama. How do you read all that? I mean, that was a real salad bowl of
mixed up stuff that year, wasn't it?

Page 16

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes, it was.

JOHN EGERTON:

But your conviction was that you could steer a course independent of the
national Democratic Party and the Dixiecrats?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, I didn't steer any course. I just was the Democratic nominee and
making plans to take office. I didn't participate in the general
presidential elections at all.

JOHN EGERTON:

I see. Would you characterize your views at that time as being identical
or similar to those of [the Dixiecrats]?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, they were sympathetic with Thurmond, but I knew it was a useless
chase. I believe that they call it Don Quixote chasing windmills. I
didn't want to get involved in it.

JOHN EGERTON:

During your first term, well, let's see, from the time you were elected,
you really went into the governor's office to be governor, really, in
'48, didn't you? I mean, that was when you were elected.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes sir, immediately after the general election in '48. I took office in
November of '48.

JOHN EGERTON:

What was the reason for that, rather than in the spring of '49?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Serving the unexpired term of my Daddy. See, I wasn't elected for a
regular term.

JOHN EGERTON:

I see, right.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

M.E. Thompson was acting governor only, and the constitution provided he
would serve until the next general election. Then when I was elected, I
took office. Now, the rest of the ticket didn't take office until the
next January.

Page 17

JOHN EGERTON:

The whole white primary thing was the big issue of that period then,
wasn't it?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes.

JOHN EGERTON:

And your feeling was, as you said, you really felt you had no choice?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Not if I wanted to be in the political arena in the state. And those were
my views at that time, too. My views politically and my views
personally.

JOHN EGERTON:

Do you think of that now?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Anyone who has studied carefully the Reconstruction history of Georgia
would have similar views, without the present experience.

JOHN EGERTON:

Well, as you think back on it now, do you have any regrets about that? Do
you wish you had maybe seen it a different way?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

No sir, if I had, I'd been a private citizen and never served as governor
or senator.

JOHN EGERTON:

During that time, a couple of people whose names show up in the newspaper
clippings, I wanted to ask you about. One was a professor at the
University of Georgia, named James Barfoot or Barfield, something like
that, and in '48 he was sort of a liberal guy, and he announced for
office on the Henry Wallace ticket and got fired at the university. Do
you remember anything about him? And a Baptist preacher named Joseph
Rabun?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes.

Page 18

JOHN EGERTON:

And he also ran for political office. What do you remember about him? I'd
never heard of him before until I ran across this.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Joe Rabun was pastor of my Daddy's church at McRae, Georgia, my home
county, and my father's hometown. When my father was running for
governor, he [Rabun] involved in the campaign, speaking out against my
Daddy. Naturally my father's preacher in a small town in south Georgia,
Daddy told me the press played it up as though it was the second coming
of Christ. [Interruption]

Rabun was constantly in the press. He's a great man. Nobody ever heard of
him prior to that.

JOHN EGERTON:

I'd never heard of him until. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Being pastor of Gene Talmadge's church and opposing Gene Talmadge made
him a hero immediately in the eyes of some. So he didn't last very long
at the church. He was unchurched, and as I recall, maybe ran against me
in '48, as I remember, or tried to.

JOHN EGERTON:

No, but he ran for something. I think maybe he ran for the Senate. I
can't remember now.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Anyway, I got him a job when he was unchurched in Atlanta, I've forgotten
what it was.

JOHN EGERTON:

You got him a job in state government?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

No, some private industry job. I've forgotten the details.

JOHN EGERTON:

Why'd you do that?

Page 19

HERMAN TALMADGE:

'Cause he was hungry [Laughter]. I've lost contact with him completely.

JOHN EGERTON:

I understand he died. I asked somebody about him.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He never did preach anymore. I've forgotten the job I got for him. It was
something in private industry.

JOHN EGERTON:

Some of your other contemporaries while you were governor were Folsom in
Alabama. What'd you think of him?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Folsom was an attractive fellow. Sort of like—I don't like to compare a
man with a dog—but that's the best analogy. You've got some dogs that
you're particularly fond of. You know all of his weaknesses, and you
don't want any bastard picking on him. That's the way I felt [Laughter] about Jim Folsom.

JOHN EGERTON:

He had a lot of weaknesses.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He had lots of limitations, but he was an attractive fellow. I didn't
want anybody picking on him, just like I wouldn't want you to go out
there and whip my puppy [Laughter]. That's the way I felt about Jim.

JOHN EGERTON:

On this whole issue of politics and ideology, was he a real liberal?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Oh yeah.

JOHN EGERTON:

Was he an integrationist?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, I think he was. He supported Henry Wallace and all that sort of
business over in Alabama.

JOHN EGERTON:

What about Sid McMath over in Arkansas?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Sid was a liberal. He was a Truman fellow. I don't know what his views
were on integration.

JOHN EGERTON:

What about Earl Long?

Page 20

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He knew Earl well. Earl was a liberal governor. I don't know what his
views were on integration.

JOHN EGERTON:

Well, I think about all these people in this particular period of time
because, again, hindsight is always so crystal clear. Looking at this
period now from '45 to '50, it strikes me as kind of a golden
opportunity for the South to kind of fix its on social wagon on its own
terms. And it kept on saying right on into the '50s and '60s, "if y'all
will leave us alone, we can work this out." Now, when I look at that
period, '45 to '50, and there was this sort of new spirit of possibility
as a result of victory in the war and the economy changing and people
having been out into the world and come back, whites and blacks alike,
and with a few people to just say, "Why don't we fix it now? Why don't
we just go ahead and make some changes, allow some political rights, try
to really fund the schools to where they're equal? Maybe not attack the
whole segregation issue head on, but. . . ."

HERMAN TALMADGE:

We did that, except the segregation issue. Starting with my building
authority, equalizing teachers' salaries, put them in school buses. For
all practical purposes, when I left office in 1955, the school system
was equal in Georgia for whites and blacks.

JOHN EGERTON:

Anyway, this is just kind of a theory of mine, I guess. You don't see
that period of time as a missed opportunity, do you?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, the first governor that was elected, up as late as Jimmy Carter, he
was elected on George Wallace's coattails.

Page 21

'Course,
he changed his philosophy with his inaugural address and won up as
president. But Georgia wasn't ready for overt integration at that
time.

Even after Carter, people in Georgia elected Lester Maddox governor in
1966.

JOHN EGERTON:

That's right, that was after Carter.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

About 1970 when George Busby came along, was about the first time race
was not an issue in this state.

JOHN EGERTON:

That's nearly twenty-five years.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

In the gubernatorial election. So that's '53 to '70, a period of. . .
.

JOHN EGERTON:

That's seventeen years, but we're really talking about from after the
war.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

About twenty years, yeah. And even George Busby wouldn't have dared
mention integration at that time.

JOHN EGERTON:

So what you're really saying is it happened as quick as it could have
happened.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Just about that. You don't change mores and attitudes of people by law.
It takes time and education.

JOHN EGERTON:

In light of that, would you, again, looking back on the Brown decision of the Supreme Court, would you see that as a
tragic mistake or was it our salvation?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, I don't see it as either. I see it as evolution of legal
principles. Of course, the state slowly evolved, and the region, to
accept it.

Page 22

JOHN EGERTON:

Was that a good direction for us to have moved historically?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, really, we should have started long before. We should have just
started with the Fourteenth Amendment. It could have been done with ease
then. We'd just lost the war, and they'd crammed it down our throat at
the point of a bayonet. That'd been the time to do it.

JOHN EGERTON:

We kind of muddle along one way or another. Are we moving in the right
direction?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

What respect are you talking about?

JOHN EGERTON:

Is this region, did the South, has it ended up being the South you wanted
it to be, or is it falling short of that?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, this whole country is falling short of what I want it to be. The
South, economically, I think is making more rapid advance than any
section in the country.

JOHN EGERTON:

And maybe other ways, too?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

That's right, other ways too. But there's many shortcomings in our
society today. 'Course, you can't change them. If I was a dictator, like
with the power of Adolph Hitler, I'd probably do a lot of things. But
when we see the work ethic destroyed, when we see morality destroyed in
this country, when we see discipline destroyed, when we see fiscal
sanity destroyed, it makes you wonder whether we're not in the last days
of the Roman empire. Many parallels.

JOHN EGERTON:

We've certainly got some pretty, yeah, it's kind of chilling, isn't it,
come to think about it? But I get back finally to the first question,
the first thing I said to you.

Page 23

You're kind of a
survivor. This revolution that's taken place right through your
lifetime, you've lived through it. You're hale and hearty and able to
look back on it and see all these changes that came to this region.
Leaving aside the greater problems that we have, are you satisfied with
what has become of the South? The South that we once had is certainly
not here, but is the one that we do have. . . ?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

If you're talking about racial customs alone, yes. I just gave you my
views of the whole nation, and that includes the South. We've gone
downhill dreadfully in many respects in the last two decades. I don't
know whether we can correct it or not.

JOHN EGERTON:

But on this racial thing, you feel like we've probably come out pretty
well on that?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes, I think we have. All the dire predictions that many of us made,
didn't come to pass.

JOHN EGERTON:

Which maybe says something about the character of southern people, white
and black.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Actually, I'll tell you a story now about relationships between blacks
and whites. My roommate on my first ship, the disguised hospital ship,
was Mack Perry. He was also from Georgia. He was a newspaper man. He
went to Mercer University. We had abroad our ship at that time what we
called the S Division, which was the blacks.

JOHN EGERTON:

The S Division? Wonder what that stood for?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Cooks. Servants, really. They were cooks and chefs and cleaned up the
officers' quarters and all like that. Every time one of those fellows,
they all had Yankee division officers,

Page 24

they were
supposed to go to the division officer when they had a problem. They
didn't do it. Blacks from New York would come to either Perry or myself
if they had a problem. They wouldn't go to his officer who was from New
York or New Jersey or something like that. I have remarked on that to
many people who served in the military in World War II. They told me the
same damn thing was true in the army and all other branches of the
service. Somehow, the blacks trusted a white southerner to try to help
them. They figured that the white northerner would give them lip service
only, which was true. Perry and I would try to help them. These other
officer wouldn't. So there's always been a relationship there of trust
between blacks and whites in the South. That's not true and wasn't true
in other areas of the country, and I don't think it's true today. That's
one reason Jimmy Carter was nominated by the Democratic Party, whenever
it was, when he was elected president.

JOHN EGERTON:

1976.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Even though they figured he was a southern redneck, they figured they
could trust him. 'Course, he wasn't portraying redneck views in those
days. I don't know what that relationship is, but it's been historically
true in this country.

JOHN EGERTON:

And in your view, still is?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yeah.

JOHN EGERTON:

Certainly there are differences that are remarkable. When you just get
out on the street, just in casual contact, relationships in the South
are different than they are in other parts of the country. Senator, I've
really enjoyed this.

Page 25

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Enjoyed seeing you. What do you do?

JOHN EGERTON:

I write.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Only write, and nothing else?

JOHN EGERTON:

Yes sir. That's all I do.

[Interruption]

HERMAN TALMADGE:

When I was in college at the University of Georgia, Time magazine would come out Thursday afternoon. It cost 15 cents.
I would take my 15 cents and go up to the store and buy me a Time magazine and read it from cover to cover.

JOHN EGERTON:

This would be in the late '30s?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yeah, early '30s. I finished law school in '36. I thought any man at that
time that read Time magazine from cover to cover was
reasonably well versed on current events, domestically and
internationally. And then I got out of school and started reading Time magazine, a lot things, where I knew the facts.
Lenin came in to see me when I was governor and wanted to know what I
thought of Time magazine. I let him have it with both
barrels. I told him the same story I've just told you. I said, "Now,
when I see a Time magazine story about the South, I
know that it's only a satire. It's written to be cute and to entertain.
It doesn't have a damn, remote reality about the South." I said, "The
greatest economic story that's going on in America today is in the
industrialization of the South, and Time magazine
hasn't had one damn word to say about it." About three weeks later, the
Time cover was the industrialization of the South
[Laughter]. I found out that that was true. Time tried
to

Page 26

be cute, and I read it thereafter for
entertainment only, not for facts.

He's a writer. He's published about eighteen books. This is going to come
out in about two years. Going to talk about the transition of race
relations in the South.

JOHN EGERTON:

You were at the University of Georgia in 1932 then?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yeah, '31 to '36.

JOHN EGERTON:

Do you remember the night Franklin Roosevelt was elected?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yeah.

JOHN EGERTON:

Where were you that night? What anecdote can you recall about that night,
election returns or anything?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I don't remember the details. Of course, it was a foregone conclusion at
that time that Roosevelt would sweep the country.

JOHN EGERTON:

Were you active in politics yourself then as a student?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Only for my Daddy. He was governor at the time I was a student there. I
started working in his campaigns in '32. Then I was a freshman.

JOHN EGERTON:

That was an election year?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He was elected in '32, and my job was to advertise his speeches, one of
my jobs. That was in the days when politicians went from courthouse to
courthouse and faced the people and talked to them straight, instead of
reading twenty second slogans

Page 27

over an idiot board.
And the way we would advertise speeches, we'd take placards and nail
them up on trees and country stores and courthouses and put little
circulars in automobiles and hand them out on the streets. I walked into
Cedartown, Georgia, one day. I was passing them out in these stores, you
know. The meat markets in those days had sawdust on the floor, big old
chopping block about four feet in diameter. The fellow would stand there
with the meat cleaver and cut up the meat. I walked in and handed this
fellow a circular. He was about 6'3" and looked like he weighed about
240. Looked at me, "I wouldn't vote for that Goddamn son-of-a-bitch for
nothing!" So that was my introduction to politics [Laughter]. He was too big for me to hit. I didn't want to run, and I
didn't want him to call my Daddy a son-of-a-bitch [Laughter], but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I walked out
with my tail between my legs [Laughter], and that was my introduction to politics.

JOHN EGERTON:

Wow. Did you see your Dad's campaign as being tied in any way to the
Roosevelt thing?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Oh, everybody in the South, in the election that you are referring to. .
. .

JOHN EGERTON:

The '32 election.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

The election you're referring to, Georgia cast 90-some odd percent of its
votes for Roosevelt. The Republicans in those days were the blacks, and
what we call post office Republicans. That was some fellow that hoped he
was going to be appointed post master or rural letter carrier [Laughter], and that was the reason he was Republican. The evolution of the
Republican Party

Page 28

in Georgia started with Roosevelt
reelection. The Republicans had been gaining strength every election
thereafter. The philosophy of the. . . .

JOHN EGERTON:

But in '32, it was pretty much a solid thing. I talked to. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I don't imagine you could have found a white man in Georgia that would
have admitted publicly in '32 [Laughter] that he was against Roosevelt.

JOHN EGERTON:

I talked to Governor Coleman over in Mississippi not long ago, and he
told me a very similar story. He was a freshman at the University of
Mississippi that fall, and he told about listening to the election
returns on the radio and how excited he was. He thinks of that as when
he got into politics.

HERMAN TALMADGE:

When Coleman was elected governor, he came over here to study what we'd
done in the schools to try to relate it to Mississippi.

MRS. TALMADGE:

Talking about race relations, I was a senior at the University of Georgia
when the University of Georgia was integrated with Hamilton Holmes and
Charlayne Hunter.

JOHN EGERTON:

Is that right? And Charlayne Hunter who's now on the nightly news.

MRS. TALMADGE:

I was a senior. And when the governor started talking about, going to
close down the University of Georgia, I thought, this is ridiculous.
Most people thought that there was no reason to have such a hullabaloo
about two people wanting to come to school. Then I went to work with the
Extension Service, and there had been a black extension service

Page 29

and a white one. I was in the middle of that
integration, and that proved to be real interesting. It went smoothly
where I happened to be.

JOHN EGERTON:

So much has happened, you know. It's very, very remarkable when you think
about what changes we've gone through that we never dreamed we would.
It's fascinating. Well, I've really enjoyed seeing you all.